[Flac] Archiving CDs w/ Flac on Linux (and subsequent re-encoding)

[Eric Sandeen]

Eric Sandeen wrote:

> After facing the thought of going through my cd collection for a 3rd 
> time for re-encoding, it occurred to me that I should just flac the 
> whole CD and add a cue sheet, and then back up to DVDs.  That way -next- 
> time I need to re-encode to any format, I can handle ~1/20th the discs, 
> compared to my whole cd collection.  :)

For what it's worth, I think I've decided to forgo the single-flac-file 
scheme.  Ripping individual tracks with cdparanoia does not leave out 
any sectors, so I can always un-flac back to one wav per track, and 
splice them together.  I'm using cdrdao to save a toc file for later cd 
creation if that becomes necessary.  Tested this on a live album (Johnny 
Cash Live at Folsom Prison) and there is no lost audio; tracks segue 
seamlessly as on the original disc.

The downside of one flac per trac seems to be a little added complexity 
of stitching them back together*
The upside is that I think it's simpler to store track metadata, 
especially for later conversion to other formats, since it can operate 
file-by-file.

Unless anyone has other reasons to avoid the flac-per-track method, I'm 
about to go burn my dvds.  :)

Thanks for all the input guys,

-Eric

*I'm not sure why flac -d 1.flac 2.flac 3.flac outputs sequential wavs 
rather than one big wav; is this intentional and/or needed?  I suppose 
the "one big wav" approach would require flac to look at all input files 
to write the proper wav header at the front, but that should be do-able...?